Low Carb Milk

We cannot obtain low carb cow’s milk in South Africa. No worries. Here is the recipe I use for my beloved tea. So quick & simple. I use about 50ml in a cup of tea. Never in coffee! For that I use Clover cream!

Camilla's Low Carb Milk

• Servings: 5 x 50ml
• Time: 3mins
• Difficulty: falling off a log
• Print

• 1/4 cup full cream milk
• 3/4 cup distilled water (I use bottled water too)
• 1 Tablespoon heavy cream (I just use Clover)
• dash of salt & sweetener to taste

Shake all ingredients together in a shaker and chill. This has 3.2 g carbohydrate; perfect for LCHF. If 1 cup of water is used, it takes more like skim milk.

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Laziest cook on earth. 4

In our days of being Rotarians, W & I enjoyed an active social life with much interaction with  fellow Rotarians and we did a lot of community service work which is what Rotary International is all about.

At the time, it was a males only organisation and one became a member by invitation only. The wives were called Rotary Anns and we dutifully played our part in the organisation which I see is still very active in community work today.

During our year as Rotary President and Rotary Ann President, we entertained a lot. We had a large double storey home, a full time domestic worker, my folks lived with us in the ‘granny flat’ and they were a wonderful support system with our teenage boys. W & I forged ahead with our respective banking careers and did our share of community work while having fun with good friends. It was a good life and we had marvellous support systems in place.

Things are somewhat different today.  We still live the good life, though in a very different way. We chose to re-locate to Cape Town and we chose to take our ‘retirement jobs’ (a bookkeeping practice) along with us.

There is little time left for entertaining and it is not easy to cater for numbers in our flat, spacious as these old apartments are. Later this year, we are re-locating (again!) to a spacious home in a leafy suburb which belongs to our middle son M. But I am getting horribly sidetracked here – that is a story for a later time.

This is the meal I threw together last night for 6 members of the family:

BUTTER CHICKEN : served with brown basmati rice, cauliflower with cheese sauce and a good tossed salad.

MIXED BERRIES DESSERT : Dessert was slightly defrosted mixed berries with a choice of diet ice cream and/or lite custard. Of course, we all chose ‘and’ and not ‘or’! Mix it all up in a purple mess in your pudding dish – divine, almost fat free and low GI.

Pretty good I would say and the scale showed no overnight weight gain at my ‘Sunday Morning Showdown’ this morning. I should have had broccoli with the cauliflower as lettuce does not count as a dark green veg. (Tabitha Hume!) Red, yellow as well as green pepper strips and home grown mung bean sprouts in the salad made up for it in a small way.

Butter Chicken!!! I hear you say. Yes, so simple really. Browned chicken thighs (bone in, skin off) in a little extra virgin olive oil, dumped them in a large casserole dish with lid and poured Denny Butter Chicken Curry Sauce over them. 20 mins with casserole lid on, 20mins with casserole lid off and left them to sit there until the Sharks had won their game against I don’t know who!

The latest Weigh Less magazine is out and included is a Coat and Cook in Sauces Guide. Get it and check it out!. It will inspire you to serve something new for your family while keeping those kilos in check! You can have a quarter of the packet of wet sauce – only 424kJ and 5.0g fat.

I was given a rice cooker recently (my slow cooker/Crockpot actually does the job just as well) and the berries I had bought in bulk out at Hillcrest Berry Orchards at the height of the berry season. I use them as a treat and am only sorry I did not buy many more kilograms of these wonderful fruits at that time. I will really stock up next year.

www.hillcrestberries.co.za

High Tea at the Nelly (Mount Nelson Hotel) is on my Bucket List but the High Tea served at Hillcrest Berry Orchards is really good. Situated in the magnificent Banhoek Valley outside Stellenbosch, this working farm is well worth the trip. Check it out. They also do B & B.

Hopefully, you are starting to see from my scribblings on this blog that we CAN eat delicious food while keeping to a healthy eating plan. With careful portion control we can still ‘have our cake and eat it’!

Laziest cook on earth. 3

It’s 03h40 as I begin writing this post. I should be asleep or next door in my office finishing off VAT returns that are due today. As I am doing neither of the two things, I decided to post the third in a series of light yet healthy meal ideas for people with no time to cook.

Which reminds me …. I used to have cookbooks called No Time To Cook 1 and No Time To Cook 2. …detour to go check my bookshelves …. no, I no longer have them. Dammit. Could have used them now. That’s what I hated about having to clean out shelves and cupboards because we were ‘ going smaller’! In the event of fire, I think I would rescue my books before I rescued my husband! Then again, he would probably rescue the TV + remote before rescuing me so we’re quits there!

I also had two books by the same zany author called I Hate To Housekeep 1 and I Hate To Housekeep 2 .. but that’s totally another story. Then again, I also had all the Superwoman books by Shirley Conran – I must have been mad!…

Back to the subject at hand – Laziest Cook 3.

Chicken breasts – skinned and deboned – are so versatile and I often just do the following and eat either cold or hot.

600g deboned chicken breasts (cut into bite sized strips)
Chicken Spice (Ina Paarman or any preferred spice/s. See below)
5-10ml olive or avocado oil (I also often just use Spray & Cook if we’ve had our fats for the day)

Very generously coat chicken strips with spice; leave to stand a while.
Spray or heat oil gently to coat a non stick pan or skillet. (I use a flat cast iron skillet)
Toss in chicken strips and dry fry until just done. Don’t overcook.
That’s it. Eat hot with veges or cold with salads.

If you have enormous energy and dedication, you could try mixing up the following rub and keeping it on hand:
Taken from: Snacks and Treats for Sustained Energy 1.
Gabi Steenkamp RD (SA) & Jeske Wellamnn RD (SA)

TANDOORI RUB
5ml (1 tsp) of each of the following:
Ground ginger
Ground cumin
Ground coriander
Ground paprika
Turmeric
Ground cayenne pepper
Salt
Coat strips generously and leave to stand for an hour.

The recipe says heat an oven to 220 degrees and bake for 15 mins until golden brown.
To my mind, that’s too much electricity for 15 mins so I rather use my stove top method.

Have a good day everyone!

Laziest cook on earth. 2

Keeping up with my laziest cook on earth appellation, I offer the quickest pud on the planet:

APPLE DESSERT (per person)

100g Unsweetened tinned pie apples
100g Nestle Dialite Vanilla Frozen Dessert
Powdered sweetener to taste
Ground cinnamon to taste

Prepare in individual bowls.
Sprinkle pie apples with sweetener and cinnamon, stir lightly.
Top with the diet ice cream

Nutritional Information: (apples)
GI: Low
GL: +- 11
Weigh-Less: 1 x Best fruit + 1 x Good milk
Energy kJ: 602
Energy calories: 144
Protein: 4g
Carbs: 32g
Fat: 0.1g
Fibre: 8.2g

Variations:
Use fresh or slightly defrosted berries – sans the cinnamon – divine!
All the berries are wonderfully low GI; with gooseberries & strawberries carrying a particularly low glycemic load.

Weigh-Less fruit portions per serving would be:
Strawberries: 150g (yeah! not for nothing do we always see Patrick Holford holding a strawberry aloft!)
Blueberries, blackberries, mulberries: 120g
Gooseberries, raspberries: 100g

If you feel so inclined, this dessert can be dressed up with some (Low GI) muesli sprinkled on the apples.
Instead of the diet ice cream, you could use Lite Long Life Custard – lovely!
NB to count the added kJ etc!

Laziest cook on earth. 1

One of the comments I often hear is that ‘dieting is expensive’.
‘The foods you have to eat cost a lot more’, they say.

Well people in all honesty that can be true (frozen ready cooked slimmers meals), but also NOT TRUE at all.

One of the foods that we should all eat a lot more of is beans; in fact all of the dried pulses, legumes and grains. Plant protein and in the main dirt cheap. As dirt cheap as food can get these days that is.

To that end, I would direct your attention to beans.

Contrary to what some people may think, baked beans on toast is a good healthy fat free/low GI/lower GL meal. Just make sure that the bread is low GI (if it does not specifically state ‘Low GI’ on the bread bag, I will not buy it) and that you do not slather the bread with butter or margerine. The tomato sauce is more than enough liquid to ensure you are not eating dry toast.

My Benutriwise calculates the nutritional information for this meal as follows:

BAKED BEANS ON TOAST – Serves 1
1 slice toast (Albany Superior Brown Seed Low GI bread -yellow label)
130g baked beans in tomato sauce (Checkers house brand Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce)

GI: Low
GL: +- 20
Weigh-Less: 1 x Complex Carb + 1 x Protein
Energy kJ 844
Energy calories 202
Protein 8g
Carbs 38g
Fat 0.76g
Fibre 2.77g
Sodium 464.2mg
Other nutrients featuring in this meal include Vitamins A and some of the B’s, calcium, iron and zinc.
Depending on the time of day, add a good green salad and you’re good to go!

The cheapest of all beans are the dried variety and in my next post I will tell you how to cook and freeze quantities of these plant protein powerhouses.

I will also publish my favourite recipe for “Old Fashioned Bean Soup”. Lekker – not many of my crowd dislike the lovely beans, bacon and potatoes in this thick, chunky winter meal in a bowl.

Winter is just around the corner.1

Yebo, winter is just around the corner. Let’s prepare for it.
I for one have to; my goal weight target date is bang in the middle of it and that is not negotiable!

In our part of the world here in Cape Town, we see a distinct change in daylight hours from summer into winter. In winter we travel to work in pitch blackness lit by street lights. Added to that misery, we have a mediterranean climate with wet winters. So driving to work – and maybe dropping sleepy kids off at creche on the way – can be a really miserable experience.

I was saying to WJJ this morning that we all get the munchies in winter. Hot soup or hot chocolate are real comfort foods when you are cold, wet and tired. I will be looking at freezing soups in controlled portions and have found a product at my supermarket that you may like to consider:

Tuffy Fill ‘n Freeze Self Standing Resealable Storage Pouches

Wow, that’s a mouthful isn’t it!
Check them out – they hold 1 litre of liquid – and they could be used & re-used through the cold season.
Not only for soup but for pasta sauces etc.

My Ultimate Breakfast

After much trial and error I have come up with, for me, the ultimate breakfast. Fat free, low GI, and sustaining energy until it’s time to eat again! You may like to try it.

Some days writing comes to me easily; and on days like today it does not! So I will just jump right in and post my breakfast ‘concoction’!
You will need:-

20g (scant 1/3 cup) traditional oats.
(I also use All Bran flakes as a change – larger quantity)
⅛ tsp Low salt
10g (rounded dessertspoon) raw oat bran
10g (rounded dessertspoon) lightly ground seeds (Miracles Plus Plus)
10g (rounded dessertspoon) goji berries – say “go-chee”!
1/3 cup (82ml) fat free milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon (I use organic for what it’s worth!)
1 x sachet Fibre Clear
Sweetener of your choice. Optional.
I use an outrageously expensive sweetener called Sweet Pea. A mixture of erythritol and stevia – looks and tastes like sugar. Zero kj; zero GI; zero GL!

Microwave the oats, salt and enough cold water to form a soft porridge.
Then add the raw oat bran, seeds, goji berries, cinnamon and Fibre Clear.
Add about 1/3 cup fat free milk and sweetener to taste.

Enjoy! I love my creation and it really does hold me until late morning or even lunchtime!